Admission
by NeverMessWithTeddyBears
Summary: I want to be like my mother, and my father, and my stepfather. I want to help people. I want to love unconditionally. I want to save lives. But, having been taught the importance of patience, I know that it is not my time. I am not ready. Yet. I just need a minute.


**Admission**

* * *

I have spent the better part of the past year sitting at my desk, staring at a blank Word document, thinking about how unfair it is that at seventeen years old I have the weight of a life decision on my shoulders. College guides piled up next to my bed while my Internet browser contained numerous bookmarks to essay advice, online college brochures and student forums. The Venn diagram of all these resources had a few intersections, but the one where they formed a circle was writing a good admissions essay; writing about something important, something that inspires you – something _meaningful_.

Initially, I did not think I had much to say, so I was going to write about my family. My mother, who left law school top of her class in order to join the Police Academy to serve and protect; my father, an architect with his own construction company; or my stepfather, a firefighter. My brother Harry once pointed out how interesting it is that while our father was there to see building rise up, our stepfather was there to see them fall down, and sometimes I still think about that. It is not that my family does not inspire me – they have always been the main motivation of my life and the thing that kept me going forward. At sixteen, when I had tried to take my own life, my mother was the one to find me lying motionless in my bed instead of being ready for school. My father was the one to take time off work to be there for me every second that I was at the hospital. It was my brother who hugged me so tight and would not let go as soon as I walked through the doors back into my home. It is my stepfather – a man full of love but whose eyes sometimes turn incredibly sad when he looks at me, thinking of the children he has lost – who has shown me that, no matter what tragedy might strike you, you can always, _always_, move away from it stronger and still find a purpose, still find happiness. But, even though I will always look to my family for guidance, it did not feel right to make any of them the focus of my essay. The focus, I felt, had to be me. Except, I did not inspire myself. I have never found myself very meaningful, but I also knew that I was young, and that I had time.

It was then, when I was in a car with my mother, stressing over how I should be studying instead of basking in our monthly routine – a favorite of mine – when I felt something hit our side and, suddenly, I was thrust into the most important moment of my life.

There was impact on my right side first. I have never felt broken ribs, but the pain felt like it. Later, the doctors would tell me they were cracked from the airbags that kept me safe. Another impact came from the left, and that one bruised my mother. She has never let anything stop her, and before long she had the windows broken and us out on the street, where a car pile-up had formed. I was in shock – only ever seeing things like these on the news or in the movies, or only hearing them from my mother – but nothing could describe how I felt when I read the notification on my phone that a tsunami had taken out the Santa Monica Pier.

My mother never hesitated. That is one thing I will always remember, one trait of hers that I hope I will find in me. She got into action without a second thought, and although I was scared I would listen to her every word, do whatever she said. All I wanted to do was help. The thought of people out there, dying or dead, fueled me to save others.

Which is how I ended up in a minivan of a woman pinned in her hair, blood gushing out of her neck. The sight of the woman – Vicky – who had been using all her remaining strength to keep pressure on her wound shook me to my core. She was losing a lot of blood and getting tired, struggling to keep her eyes open. My mother called me over, yelled for my help with a panic in her voice I could hear faintly, only because I was her daughter, because I had known each tone of her voice, each emotion its change would represent. She pressed my hand on the woman's wound, guided me to put the right amount of pressure, and went to get more help.

I was terrified – and saying that was an understatement. I would look at Vicky and think about how her life was now in my hands, and I will admit that in that moment I had wished for nothing more than for my mother to suddenly return and take that responsibility away from me. But life does not work like that. It sets you on a path and rarely allows you to switch responsibilites. And, one the water started flooding the street from the sewers and electricity started running through it, my mother could not have come no matter how much she wanted to.

I think a lot about one moment, then. A moment of when I was calling for my mother and had my foot halfway out of the van. A moment where I was scared and had let the fear overtake me. I think of what could have happened had my mother not called out to me, had I taken that step out. I would wake up from dreams shaking from what mimicked electricity, from nightmares of how I thought that would have felt. But then I remind myself that I had stayed in the car, and the dreams turn to something else.

They turn to my blood stained hands taking off my cropped white hoodie to press it to Vicky's neck. They turn to seeing her head fall down over and over again and me begging her to stay awake. To me asking her to think of everyone out in the world who had loved her and to me having to tell them she had died in my arms. _I am seventeen_, I told her. _You will not traumatise me like this_.

They turn to me holding her head to my chest, Vicky cradled in my arms as much as possible as she was still pinned to her seat. I felt like I was holding a child, my mind taking me back to when I was younger and my brother had been born, and when I – barely taller than him – would lie down and hold him next to me; took me back to when my parents would lay me on top of them and I would fall asleep listening to their heartbeats.

I could not feel Vicky's.

That was how my mother found me. Bloody hands and tears streaming down my face and my heart broken. I couldn't move, and my voice was hoarse as I told her I tried my best to keep her awake, that I tried everything, that I tried so hard.

I do not remember much for a few moments after that. Seconds, my mom would tell me later, but to me it felt like years. I believe I was standing on the street, the water no longer getting the electricity that could kill me. But I could barely register anything. It was all both too quiet and too loud at the same time. Both overwhelming and empty. I felt frozen but also on fire. I can faintly remember my mother's hands on me, leading me away from the car. Faintly remember the first responders reaching Vicky.

What stays with me the most, though, what I can still hear most clearly, is one of them saying they found a pulse. I turned to my mother, disbelieving, and could only sob. It was both relief and pain and joy and fear. So much fear, just rushing through me. I could not breathe, and my mother held me tight, whispering reassurances into my ear, caressing my hair.

That day, I realized what it meant to save a life. It had in some ways brought me back to my suicide attempt, to imagining how my mother must have felt finding me unresponsive in my bed. How she cradled me like I cradled Vicky. But we were both saved. We were both given our lives to continue living them. And it was a feeling unlike one I have never felt to know I was there to help someone on a scale such as that.

I told my mother that I did not think I could ever be like her. So calm, present, effective. Collected in the face of chaos. She told me something, then, that stays with me still. She told me I just needed a minute. So, that is what I am doing.

For the better part of the last year, I had thought about my unwritten college admissions essay and felt like I had nothing to write about because I had never thought of myself as inspiring. I still do not, but I think it is in the human nature to never search for inspiration in oneself but rather in those around you; those who you love and who love you. What I realize now is that the thruth of the situation was that I felt I had no purpose. I would think of the direction in which I wanted my life to go and I would find myself in an unmarked crossroads. But now – now I know what I want to do.

I want to be like my mother, and my father, and my stepfather. I want to help people. I want to love unconditionally. I want to save lives. But, having been taught the importance of patience, I know that it is not my time. I am not ready. _Yet_.

I just need a minute.

And I would love for that to be at the University of California, Los Angeles.


End file.
